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Abattoirs metropolitan premises. Their deterioration brought obsoles- cence. The closure in 1977 of the Flemington abattoirs, and of Angliss, all but ended central metropolitan slaughtering. Melbourne’s butchers commonly slaughtered livestock on JOHN LACK their premises, until parliament and Melbourne City Council confined slaughtering to public slaughterhouses (abattoirs), first (1849) below Batmans Hill on the Yarra Abbotsford River, and from 1861 at Flemington on the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River. Arguing that shops and markets had to be supplied quickly and regularly with fresh meat in the (3067, 4 km E, Yarra City) warmer Australian climate, butchers resisted what they In 1838, when Collingwood land was first offered for sale, a termed ‘civic interference’, and objected to abattoir fees, handful of pastoralists, solicitors and merchants purchased road tolls and the distance to Flemington. They were swiftly 25-acre (10 ha) blocks and established rural retreats along accommodated by municipal abattoirs, erected from 1861 in the western banks of the Yarra River. John Orr built an arc stretching along the Yarra from Collingwood to Abbotsford, named after a ford used by the Abbot of Williamstown, and in 1870 only one-third of Melbourne’s Melrose Abbey in Scotland, and thus gave the area its meat was being supplied from Flemington. eventual name. Other early owners of ‘out-of-town’ estates Public abattoirs gave control to lessees and specialist were Captain William Lonsdale and Andrew and Georgiana slaughterers who, laxly supervised, simply concentrated the McCrae, who called their home Mayfield. One version of the nuisances. While waste (blood and offal) from the premises Aboriginal name for the area was Carran-Carranulk, after of butchers who defied the law went into street channels, the carran or prickly myrtle. Richard Goldsbrough built The that from public abattoirs drained directly to the rivers and Rest and Edward Curr, the chief agent for the Van Diemen’s Port Phillip Bay, and that from private slaughterhouses on Land Co., built St Helier’s. the outskirts of suburbia discharged to creeks (see rivers While much of 1850s Collingwood was subdivided into and creeks), sandpits and quarries. The droving of stock tiny housing allotments, blocks by the river remained along suburban streets caused local nuisances to house- largely intact. Alongside the comfortable houses, the first holders, but smells from filthy riverside abattoirs and their of a number of noxious trades was established by Peter attendant noxious trades were carried by northerly and Nettleton, who opened a wool-scouring and fell-mongering westerly winds into Melbourne’s salubrious suburbs, and the business. Other wool scourers, tanners, abattoirs and tallow tidal rivers delivered solid wastes to the city’s front door. works followed, becoming a source of river and air ‘Meat three times a day’ was a proud colonial boast, but pollution. In addition, nightsoil collected from Collingwood Marvellous Melbourne was suffocating in the effluence of backyards during the 1860s was often illegally dumped into its own affluence. the Yarra at Abbotsford. From the 1870s numerous parliamentary inquiries In 1863 the Sisters of the Good Shepherd established an wrestled with the issues of public nuisance and sanitation. asylum for ‘fallen’ women in Abbotsford House and the More stringently regulated by the Board of Public Health neighbouring property, St Helier’s. Over the next two decades from the late 1880s, suburban abattoirs declined in number. they also cared for wards of the state, juvenile offenders and Increasingly the eastern and south-eastern suburbs were convent girls, who tended the large vegetable gardens, parts of supplied from abattoirs at Oakleigh, Mulgrave (1909) and which became the Collingwood Children’s Farm. Box Hill (1910), but vested interests (rural stockowners and Brewing (see brewers and brewing) was a local tradition, city-based meat processors) blocked attempts to relocate to consolidated in 1903 when the Melbourne Co-operative the city’s western fringe the ever-growing Flemington Brewery was established by hotel interests concerned at the abattoirs and their attendant Newmarket saleyards. Meat rising cost of beer produced by established breweries. This exporting had boomed in the 1860s and did again from the brewery was absorbed into the Carlton & United Group 1880s. The early meat-preserving works were congregated in 1925 and the Abbotsford Brewery became the major along the Saltwater River, and their successors, which also production centre for Carlton & United Breweries. exported frozen meat, located themselves in the inner A reproduction of the Skipping Girl sign is erected on western suburbs at Newport (public and private freez- Victoria Street, and Dights Falls are located nearby on the ing works), Footscray (Angliss Meatworks, 1905), and Yarra River. Dights Paddock was adjacent vacant land Brooklyn (Borthwicks). Eventually, efficient refrigerated owned by the Dight family from 1838 to 1878; most of it road transport, country killing, the growing live sheep was eventually purchased by Collingwood Council, which export trade and more stringent export standards created a turned it into a recreation ground that became Victoria Park, cycle of declining profitability and investment in the older former home of the Collingwood Football Club.

In the 1930s many residential streets in Abbotsford were Aboriginal artefacts have emerged in Central Melbourne, labelled as slum pockets, with innumerable tiny houses though most Aboriginal products come from other States crowded into narrow streets and rights-of-way, and after rather than from local Aboriginal people. World War II many houses were replaced by factories. GAYE SCULTHORPE Abbotsford experienced moderate gentrification from the 1980s. JILL BARNARD Aboriginal Child-Care Agency Aberfeldie A Koorie community organisation which oversees place- (3040, 9 km NW, Moonee Valley City) ments for Aboriginal children in need of alternative care, A western pocket of Moonee Ponds and Essendon, on high Aboriginal Child-Care Agency (ACCA) was founded by ground overlooking the Maribyrnong River from the Mollie Dyer in 1976. It worked initially through the north, Aberfeldie is a small residential suburb with large Victorian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service but became a areas of parks and reserves. James Robertson purchased separate organisation in 1978, when its right to be consulted Crown land here in 1845 and gave his house its Scottish was recognised by the State Department of Community name. When the Aberfeldie Estate was first offered for sale Welfare Services. Committed to asserting the ‘normality’ of by subdivision in the 1880s, scattered substantial houses Aboriginal family structures in order to reverse insensitive appeared. Further attempts to sell blocks continued into the welfare intervention and the over-representation of 20th century. By the 1920s local residents had prevailed on Aboriginal children in care, ACCA runs family support the Essendon Council to purchase a large area by the river as programs and administers Link-Up services for individuals recreation space. By then Aberfeldie was populous enough removed from their families in the past. SHURLEE SWAIN to become Essendon’s fourth ward and to need a state primary school of its own. JILL BARNARD Aboriginal Community 2 Aboriginal artefacts Elders Service

This aged care service was established by the Koorie Artefacts made by Aboriginal people in the Melbourne community to care for elders previously isolated in hospitals region consist of ancient objects of stone and bone; wood, and other institutions. Planning began in 1987 in response bone and fibre objects surviving from the 19th century; to discussion about the problems faced by older people in and contemporary artefacts made for sale. Non-portable the local community. Led by Gunditjmara elder Aunty artefacts such as scarred trees are also found in situ in various Iris Lovett-Gardiner, the group secured Commonwealth locations around the metropolitan region. Government funding to establish a 24-bed hostel in East The artefacts surviving from the pre-colonial period are Brunswick designed and operated in accordance with mainly stone implements of various kinds. These have been Aboriginal cultural principles. Aboriginal Community retrieved from many metropolitan sites. Stone for making axes Elders Service (ACES) also administers Home Care packages was an important item of trade. Stone from the Mount in the Koorie community. William quarry at Lancefield, just north of Melbourne, was SHURLEE SWAIN traded extensively in south-eastern Australia. Stone tools were used to grind seeds, to make weapons, and for scraping and cutting. Items made of organic materials such as wood, skin Aboriginal Melbourne and fibres are fragile and few of these have survived from the Melbourne region. Those that have survived (items such as a canoe, water vessels, clubs and shields) form an important part Initial relations between indigenous and settler people in the of Victorian Aboriginal heritage. Items from the period before Melbourne region were mixed, but combined to create a 1835 and later items not made for sale are protected by law. familiar pattern marked by colonial power. On 15 February Aberfeldie Following European colonisation, Aboriginal people at 1802, 20 crew of the brig Lady Nelson, the first ship to enter mission stations such as at Coranderrk, near Healesville, Port Phillip Bay, met five Boon wurrung men on the beach continued to make artefacts both for their own use and for near Arthurs Seat. They exchanged greetings and danced, but sale to tourists. Income from the sale of items such as that afternoon violence erupted and contacts ceased. The baskets, boomerangs and skin cloaks was important for the Boon wurrung also kept their distance from the garrison economic survival of station residents. at the abortive convict settlement at Sorrento (1803–1804). In the 20th century with an increased demand for Over the next 30 years, sealers, whalers and a few castaways Aboriginal products, individual Aboriginal people made (including William Buckley) made intermittent, sometimes artefacts specifically for sale to tourists. Bill Onus established violent, contacts with Kulin clans. a factory and shop, Aboriginal Enterprises, at Belgrave in the In May 1835 John Batman, representing Hobart entre- 1950s. This became a significant outlet for sale of Aboriginal preneurs, made a treaty with the Woi wurrung and Boon products. Aboriginal people continue to make items for sale wurrung people, allegedly purchasing some of their land (see (including art, artefacts, jewellery and other items) which can Batman’s Treaties). Three months later John Pascoe Fawkner be purchased at Aboriginal keeping places and community and his party settled the Yarra River bank. From the first,

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: events. Since the 1980s many retail (see retailing) outlets for both cultural groups desired contact with and control over the

INDIGENOUS POPULATION (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001 Census)

other. The settlers sought conciliation with the Aboriginal 1839 a government Aboriginal Protectorate existed (see Port people, ‘savages’ as they often termed them, to access their Phillip Protectorate). Rather, these were ‘relations of knowledge of the land and then to expropriate it. The Kulin genocide’, as historian Tony Barta has called them, relations sought to access some desirable European artefacts – steel shaped by the unintended outcomes of a rapid decline of axes, guns and the like – from these interloping ‘white ghosts’ Aboriginal people. The usurping of Aboriginal lands by and to tame them to Aboriginal purposes. Both sides had settlers and their cloven-hoofed sheep scared away the game, The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: mixed views as to how to deal with the situation, but caution trampled the grasslands and waterholes, and ate out the root and conciliation initially prevailed. This is evident in vegetables that formed the Kulin’s staple diet. Despite its Fawkner’s account of relations with the Kulin. Some of the environmental damage, pastoralism could have coexisted upcountry Kulin planned to kill Fawkner’s party for their with Aboriginal land use, but the settlers’ exclusive ideas of goods. Two of the local Melbourne clan heads, Derrimut and property swept the Aboriginal economy aside, disrupting Billibellari, preferred to use diplomacy and warned the use of Aboriginal lands, and their cultural and ritual life. Europeans about an attack. Fawkner forced the attacking New respiratory and other diseases (see diseases and party across the Yarra, burning their weapons and canoes, but epidemics) devastated the Kulin, already weakened by rapid exercised moderation. Thereafter, Derrimut and several others change. Their psychic disorientation created fatalism among attached themselves to Fawkner, who, like Batman, was soon some. Billibellari, an elder, commented in 1843 that ‘black- supporting groups of Kulin in return for work. fellows all about say that no good have them pickaninneys As more Europeans arrived to take advantage of the now, no country for blackfellows like long time ago’. A drop pastoral economy or to work in the growing town, the in new births compounded the Kulin’s decline.

balance tipped in the Europeans’ favour. Conciliation gave However, fatalism was not the dominant response. Most Melbourne Aboriginal way to European arrogance and Aboriginal resentment. This Kulin revealed a zest for cultural interaction. They camped produced ill feeling and scuffles, but fatalities were largely in scores, even hundreds, by the Yarra in the early 1840s to confined to the frontier. However, the ‘Melbourne tribes’ – sample European novelties, especially flour, mutton and the Boon wurrung and the Woi wurrung – were affected by tobacco. One Kulin man in 1844 remarked: ‘the bush big one violent frontier relations as they moved about their lands hungry no bellyfull like it Melbourne’. They quickly learned outside the settlement or visited Kulin kin upcountry. English and sang Scottish (see Scots) songs with a brogue. Genocidal outcomes developed, but not of the classic They desired guns and metal objects. Some Kulin traded type of a deliberate official policy of extermination, for after lyrebird feathers and possum skins or laboured around

Melbourne to purchase such items. They were not averse to His strategies included a petition to the King calling for behaviours called ‘begging’ by the Europeans, which to them federal intervention in Aboriginal affairs and Aboriginal were reciprocal exchanges for the use of their land. The parliamentary representation. He and others also devised a Kulin frequented the Government Mission by the Yarra Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938 to protest the 150th while there was food to be had, and enrolled their children anniversary celebrations of white settlement. in the Baptist (Aboriginal) School on the Merri Creek, Most Melburnians had little contact with the small where they were cared for while their parents travelled on Melbourne Aboriginal community in the interwar years. Kulin business. Many young Kulin men joined the Native Perhaps some heard Cooper or Bill Onus speak at Yarra Bank Police Corps, based at Narre Warren, to gain access to food, Park, read their occasional letters to the editor, or saw fine uniforms, guns, horses and added power. Aboriginal people about Fitzroy. Many more marvelled at By the early 1840s, the government discouraged the Kulin Doug Nicholls, dubbed ‘the flying Abo’, who played for from visiting their own lands, arguing that they lowered the Northcote and Fitzroy Football Club around 1930 before tone of an increasingly ‘respectable’ town. By the 1850s, the ministering to the Gore Street Mission in the 1940s. Others Kulin worked in the Plenty Valley and the Mornington saw Mulga Fred, an Aboriginal whip-cracker from the Western Peninsula as rural labourers, shepherds and stockmen, for District, performing at Victorian Football League matches. hard-pressed employers during gold rush labour shortages. By the 1950s, however, Aboriginal people had a higher They visited Melbourne on drays and horses, delivering or profile in Melbourne. Many theatregoers witnessed the collecting goods, trading lyrebird feathers, visiting gunsmiths, highly acclaimed Aboriginal production Out of the dark, calling on their friend William Thomas, then the Guardian of which was part of the Jubilee celebrations. Others saw Bill Aborigines, or simply seeking amusement. Six Kulin men Bull, gumleaf player, busking at Princes Bridge before being even performed corroborees for a week in the Queen’s moved on by the police or gaoled. In 1950 the Melbourne Theatre in 1856 to entertain the gold-diggers. These Kulin Herald defended his right to be there and a top Melbourne workers dressed like European labourers until nightfall, when lawyer represented him in court. they threw off their work clothes and slept under the stars as In 1958 policy changes followed the Cabinet-inspired their people had always done. McLean Report, which urged equal rights and citizenship for However, few Kulin survived. Their numbers plummeted Aboriginal people at the price of assimilating to white ways. by 90% in 20 years. William Thomas, Assistant Aboriginal A new Aborigines Welfare Board represented this renewed Protector (later Guardian) from 1839, reported that the Boon commitment to assimilation. Ironically, Aboriginal people 4 wurrung and Woi wurrung, who numbered about 350 in 1835, not under the Board’s control were finally acknowledged as and 233 by 1840, totalled only 28 in 1857 (17 Woi wurrung being Aboriginal, at the very time the Welfare Board planned and 11 Boon wurrung). In 1863, these survivors moved to their absorption and cultural disappearance. The previous Coranderrk, a traditional camping site near Healesville, once year, 1957, the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League their request for farming land had been granted. (VAAL) was formed in Melbourne, providing Aboriginal Once special Aboriginal legislation was introduced in people with a means of resisting the Welfare Board’s assimi- the Parliament of Victoria in 1860, Aboriginal people lationist agenda. While Aboriginal people desired equality were subordinate to the state. After the Aborigines Act with other Victorians they did not want to become just was strengthened in 1869, the Board for the Protection of like them. By the mid-1960s VAAL and the Lake Tyers Aborigines was empowered to determine where Aboriginal community battled the Board’s efforts to dismantle the people could live and work, and could remove their children reserve and distribute Aboriginal people among white if deemed neglected. By 1877, half of the surviving 1000 communities. In 1968 its criticisms helped topple the Board Aboriginal people in Victoria lived under direct Board control and its policies and led to the hand-back of Lake Tyers and on six rural reserves and missions. The remainder lived nearby Framlingham lands to the communities. In Melbourne, to stay in contact with kin. In 1886, a new Act pushed those VAAL developed hostels, services and a permanent centre of mixed descent (‘half-castes’ in the Act’s terminology) off for the Melbourne Aboriginal community at Northcote. the missions to ‘blend’ into the white population. They ceased By the 1960s one in five Aboriginal Victorians lived in to be Aboriginal people in the eyes of the government. In 1925 Melbourne. While distinct regional identities still existed about 200 people remaining under the Board’s control were among Aborigines in the metropolis, Aboriginal balls at the centralised at Lake Tyers reserve, near Lakes Entrance. Northcote Town Hall, community activities, and inter- Some of those pushed off the missions drifted back to marriage, helped to modify regional identities and strengthen Melbourne seeking work. However, there was no significant pan-Aboriginal feeling. In 1969 the word ‘Koori(e)’ emerged Melbourne Aboriginal community at this time to keep them and was used especially by younger Aboriginal people. There Aboriginal Melbourne there. The 1901 census recorded 46 Aboriginal people living was also a movement into the wider community, with 11% of in Melbourne. Some were domestic servants, others were married Aboriginal men and 27% of married Aboriginal children who had been removed from their parents under the women in the 1960s having non-Aboriginal partners. 1886 Act. A few were in training, preparatory to working at In the early 1970s, Aboriginal-run health, housing and low wages for whites. The boys trained at the Salvation legal services and other community bodies were formed in Army farm school at Bayswater, normally a home for Melbourne. Aboriginal people drifted to the city in search of troublesome boys, while the girls learned domestic skills at jobs, lured there by the growth of community organisations. church institutions. In 1986 over 6000 people of indigenous descent lived in The 1920s saw the re-emergence of Aboriginal people in Melbourne, almost half the State total. By 1996 their Fitzroy, most living around the intersection of George and numbers in Melbourne had climbed to almost 11 000, again Gertrude streets. This community, formed of people from almost half of their Victorian total; currently they total all over the State, forged the first pan-Aboriginal political almost 15 000 in the Melbourne region. Melburnians of movement in Victoria. William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta man indigenous descent are scattered thinly throughout city and from the Murray Valley, established the Australian suburbs, except for modest concentrations in Fitzroy,

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: Aborigines’ League in 1933 to push for citizenship rights. Northcote and Preston. A larger concentration exists at

nearby Healesville, a traditional place of the Kulin and a Abortion pleasant rural area with affordable housing. Such clusters create dozens of fiercely supported community groups as the government found to its cost when it attempted to close the Always a contentious feature of Melbourne life, abortion has Koorie-backed Northland Secondary College in 1992. After been publicly condemned but privately accepted as an unfor- four years of court battles the community retained the right tunate inevitability. ‘Pills for female obstruction’ marketed to government support for the school. during the 19th century by doctors such as parliamentarian Koorie cultural expression now forms a vibrant part of L.L. Smith (1830–1910) were overtaken by more interven- Melbourne’s multicultural ambience. Key examples are the tionist methods, offered by midwives in the poorer suburbs establishment of exhibitions at the Koorie Heritage Trust and by doctors in clinics and private hospitals for the more from 1985, the creation of a Koorie heritage trail called affluent. The risks of such methods were evident in the high ‘Another View’, the existence of Koorie music groups and maternal mortality rates, which continued into the 1930s. the creation of the Melbourne Museum’s Bunjilaka Centre Abortion was illegal but police collusion and the reluctance of in 2000. The popularity of these cultural expressions reflects juries to convict meant that successful prosecutions were rare. a growing tolerance between Koories and Gubbas (to use The decision by police to break this compact in 1967 opened local indigenous words) or Aboriginal and other Victorians a space for debate in which abortion law reform campaigner (to use English terms). Koories now move more confidently Dr Bertram Wainer exposed the corruption which underwrote in the wider community, adhering as always to their contemporary practice. The 1969 Menhennit ruling, which Aboriginal identities, kin and culture. Most Melburnians held that abortion was not illegal if the physical or mental now respect these Koorie cultural expressions. health of the mother was at risk, and the 1974 addition of abortion to the medical benefits list, facilitated the develop- Richard Broome. Aboriginal Victorians: A history since 1800. ment of both public and private clinics. This liberalisation has Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005. been welcomed by feminists but opposed by the Catholic Meyer Eidelson. The Melbourne dreaming: A guide to the Church (see Catholicism) and anti-abortion groups like Right Aboriginal places of Melbourne. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies to Life, which continue to argue for a strengthening of the Press, 1997. existing law. Alick Jackomos and Derek Fowell (eds). Living Aboriginal history SHURLEE SWAIN of Victoria: Stories in the oral tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 5 RICHARD BROOME The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: Abortion

A RARE SIGHT IN 19TH- CENTURY M ELBOURNE – AN A BORIGINAL CRICKET MATCH AT THE M ELBOURNE C RICKET G ROUND. (Artist: Samuel Calvert. Illustrated Melbourne Post, 24 January 1867)

Academy of Mary on Easter Monday, 20 April 1908, when the Bendigo train smashed into the rear of the Ballarat train which had just Immaculate departed Braybrook Junction. The Ballarat train was crowded with returning holiday-makers and bridal parties and the collision and subsequent fire took the lives of (88 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy) 44 people, with another 413 injured. In July 1910 Brighton A Catholic secondary day college for girls established by the and Elsternwick trains collided in heavy fog at Richmond, Sisters of Mercy in 1857, the Academy of Mary Immaculate killing nine, and other railway fatalities occurred at West has the distinction of being the first convent school in Melbourne (1912, two fatalities), Caulfield (1926, three colonial Victoria. fatalities), and Laverton (1976, one fatality). On 7 February Three Irish sisters came to Melbourne in March 1857 and 1969, the Melbourne–Sydney express train the Southern were given a 14-room house, with mortgage, by the then Aurora hit a goods train head on at Violet Town, outside of bishop, James Alipius Goold. He wished the sisters to be Melbourne, killing nine people. self-supporting and advised them to open a fee-paying select Transport accidents were by no means uncommon in the school for girls from the neighbourhood, to be augmented pre-motor car era, and city inquests attest to poor road by a boarding school for daughters of Catholics living in conditions, shying and bolting horses, and the furious rural areas. galloping of riders. Thomas Hall, a 47-year-old irondresser, Mother Ursula Frayne, leader of the Mercy community, became Melbourne’s first known motor car fatality when he opened the school in convent rooms on 29 April 1857 with was knocked down by MacPherson Robertson’s vehicle at six pupils. By the end of the year, enrolments were at 43, the intersection of Nicholson and Gertrude streets, Fitzroy, with girls aged between three and 18. Subjects taken included on 24 August 1905. While ameliorated from the 1970s by music, elocution, English, French, Italian and drawing. The more concerted road safety measures, Melbourne’s annual sisters taught, but from early on also employed lay staff. toll of death and trauma on the roads is a measure both of At present the school population is some 540. There is a the city’s car dependency and the collective myopia of a wide diversity of cultural background among students, and citizenry prepared to sacrifice its own kin for speed, power the school specialises in English as a second language (ESL) and independence. and Integration Programs, supported by Commonwealth Expansion of the suburban railway from the 1920s, funding. coupled with the growth of motorised road transport, 6 MAREE ALLEN ushered in an era of regular accidents and fatalities at level crossings. The collision of a bus and train at Boronia in June 1952, with nine fatalities, brought to a total of 28 deaths and 54 injuries at that crossing since 1926. Improved signalling Accidents and disasters technology and the replacement of old-style gates with booms made railway crossings safer, but never completely eliminated fatal level-crossing accidents. Melbourne has over the course of its history both defended In October 1938, the Kyeema, an Australian National its population against damaging environmental phenomena Airways Douglas DC-2 aircraft, crashed into Mount and technological mishaps, and itself been an agent of insta- Dandenong en route from Adelaide to Essendon Airport. bility and recklessness. Periods of rapid city growth have With 18 fatalities, this was Melbourne’s worst aviation often run ahead of the necessary social and regulatory disaster. Other multiple fatalities occurred in 1970 (a Beech frameworks. By virtue of its structural and demographic aircraft collided with a helicopter near Moorabbin Airport), density, the city has been vulnerable to fires, floods and in 1978 (a Partenaia 68 aircraft crashed into a house near disease, and human error and technical failure can be tracked Essendon Airport), and in 1986 (a Cessna 202 air ambulance across the city’s history. Counted across generations, the crashed into a suburban field near Essendon Airport). impact of accidents and disasters in Melbourne can be The streets of the colonial city presented the unwary measured in mental trauma, community dislocation, the pedestrian with a range of impediments, obstructions and disruption to livelihoods, infrastructure and the economy, dangers, some liable to be fatal. Reports of drownings in the loss of life and the suffering of the injured. Of those potholed and poorly lit streets were common before the disasters that remain lodged in the national memory, the 1860s. People fell down hotel cellar gratings or through most notable are the Sunshine Rail Disaster (1908), the verandah roofs. A developing array of building regulations 1918–19 influenza epidemic (see diseases and epidemics), the began to protect the public domain of footpath and street Academy of MaryAcademy Immaculate West Gate Bridge disaster (1970), and the Ash Wednesday from the nuisances of construction sites, prohibiting bushfires (1983). builders from dangerously obstructing footways or Maritime disasters were a feature of 19th-century inter- working on adjacent buildings to the danger of those colonial and international trade and travel, and many lives below, and limiting the hours during which such work were lost in shipwrecks as vessels tackled the treacherous could be carried out. In addition to the risk of being Port Phillip heads in rough conditions. Railway accidents showered in brick dust from building sites, splattered with were a periodic occurrence from the 1860s, although the paint under verandahs, or showered by overflowing gutters, crash of a train from Brighton Beach between Jolimont and it was not uncommon for pedestrians to narrowly escape Flinders Street Station in August 1881, with four fatalities, injury or death from falls of scaffolding, heavy flower pots, was the first attended by passenger deaths and multiple lumps of freestone, cement work, plaster ornaments and injuries. Other noted collisions or derailments in the 19th pieces of iron or piping. By the second half of the 20th century occurred on the Hawthorn railway (1882, one century, construction sites were more likely to be fatality), Little River (1884, three fatalities), and Windsor sequestered from their environs, but the building industry (1887, six fatalities). Melbourne’s greatest rail disaster and continued to be a locus of injury and death. In 1961 three

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: the worst in Australia to that time, occurred at Sunshine people died when a crane collapsed at the Colonial Mutual

building construction site at the corner of Elizabeth and Collins streets. While there were no fatalities when the fracture of supporting girders brought down a section of the King Street bridge, 35 people were killed when a section of the West Gate Bridge collapsed in October 1970. Workplace safety, progressively deregulated, is monitored by the Victoria WorkCover Authority. Urban fires were common in the 19th-century city, with many Melbourne landmarks succumbing to flames. In 1924 a Metropolitan Gas Company gas holder, weakened by internal corrosion, burst at Port Melbourne. Despite the spectacular explosion and column of flame, there were limited injuries and no loss of life. A fire at the Coode Island chemical store on 21 August 1991 had been preceded by explosions of toxic chemicals at other transport depots, factories and petrochemical plants in Altona West, Laverton North, Sunshine, Deer Park, Braybrook, and Footscray. Drowning in rivers and creeks, quarry holes and at beaches was a common source of death in the 19th century, while baths and domestic swimming pools continued to pose

a risk, particularly to young children. Flood mitigation R EMOVING THE WOUNDED AFTER THE RAILWAY ACCIDENT AT P RAHRAN. works along the Yarra River from the late 19th century, (Illustrated Australian News, 21 May 1887) together with improved drainage systems, abated the risk of major inundation, although localised flash floods can still occur seasonally, flooding houses and shops and stranding Acclimatisation Society motorists. Destructive Yarra flooding in October 1934 claimed 35 lives in and around Melbourne. Only minor of Victoria earthquakes are felt in the Melbourne region, a smart shock 7 in August 1841 being recorded as the third since the formation of the settlement. Many 19th-century diseases The Acclimatisation Society of Victoria (ASV) was estab- such as typhoid resulted from poor sewerage and drainage. lished in 1861 when Edward Wilson, former editor of the A well-publicised outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease at Argus, returned to the colony from Britain. He found the the Melbourne Aquarium in 2000 took two lives. Two of Zoological Society of Victoria (ZSV) in disarray, a situation Melbourne’s most notorious crimes occurred in 1987 when caused largely by the severely strained relationship between 16 people were killed and 24 injured in two separate Ferdinand von Mueller and other active members of the shootings in Queen and Hoddle streets. Suburban engross- society. Inspired by the acclimatisation movement in ment of the rural fringes, together with lifestyle and aesthetic Europe, Wilson orchestrated a change of name for the expectations, and outmoded planning and design codes, have society and a permanent location in Royal Park. The The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: contributed to the cost in lives and property at the hands of existing members of the ZSV such as Professor Frederick the annual bushfire season. Summer heatwaves invariably McCoy, Thomas Embling and other eminent members of cause heat-related deaths, while electrical storms, tornados the scientific (see science) and professional community, all (such as the Brighton Tornado) and heavy rain cause continued to play an active role in the transformed society. periodic damage and insurance losses. The objective of the new Acclimatisation Society was to The necessity to respond adequately and efficiently to import animals with economic, game or recreational value in accidents and disasters has led to the progressive develop- large numbers so as to establish them as part of the regional ment of Melbourne’s emergency services (see ambulance livestock or wildlife. Government support made the ASV services, Metropolitan Fire Brigade, hospitals, medical one of the wealthiest acclimatisation societies in the world. technology) as well as insurance companies. Accidents and For four years, they arranged the importation of Cashmere disasters are also times when communities rally, with volun- goats, alpacas, pheasant, deer, hare, sparrows and thrushes. tarism playing an important role in the relief and recovery Once the animals had recovered from their journey, they process. Inquests, government inquiries and press reports were farmed out to friends of the society.

are revealing about the ways in which city-dwellers The introduction of songbirds contributed to the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria confronted both private and public disorder and calamity, society’s reputation as a misguided organisation. Contrary to and attempted to guard against or at least minimise the the wishes of some members of the ASV, Edward Wilson effects of future catastrophes. In 1864, the father of a 9-year- imported large numbers of birds at his own expense to old boy who drowned at Footscray was very clear on the ‘enliven’ the bush. These birds provoked the only contem- cause of his son’s death: ‘I should not have allowed the child porary protest about the activities of the society when, in to have gone fishing if asked, on account of it being the 1868, farmers complained that sparrows were destroying Sabbath day.’ The providentialism observable in Melbourne’s their fruit crops. early decades, when deaths were commonly attributed to The ASV’s active history ended in the late 1860s as Acts of God, can be contrasted with the manner in which expensive experiments failed and illegal hunters decimated many accidents – such as road trauma – were normalised in the game animals. The society’s new gardens, soon to be the 20th century as predictable outcomes of technological known as Melbourne Zoo, attracted few visitors, having and social development. no facilities or exotic animals. By 1870, the society was on ANDREW BROWN-MAY the point of closing when Albert Le Souef was appointed

honorary secretary and wound down the acclimatisation offered within the university prospectus. From 1913 the activities. As the emphasis of the ASV shifted towards UEB formed a close working relationship with the new displaying exotic animals, the society was renamed the Melbourne branch of the Workers’ Education Association Zoological and Acclimatisation Society of Victoria in 1872. (WEA). The WEA organised and recruited students while The only acclimatisation work that continued on any scale the UEB provided subjects and lecturers. However the UEB- was the propagation of trout in Victoria’s inland waterways. WEA arrangement soon failed: the public ignored it and the The word ‘Acclimatisation’ lived on until 1957 when the organisation’s primary target group – trade unionists and organisation was finally wound up. The ZASV had given up their leaders – used the services of their own labour college its role in the management of the zoo in 1936. from 1917. The UEB-WEA structure endured under hapless Catherine de Courcy. Evolution of a zoo: A history of Melbourne leadership for three decades until its reconstitution as the Zoological Gardens, 1857–1900. Melbourne: Quiddlers Press, Council of Adult Education (CAE) in 1947. The CAE was 2003. led by the charismatic Colin Badger until 1971 and then by Linden Gillbank. ‘The origins of the Acclimatisation Society of a succession of highly capable directors. From its inception Victoria: Practical science in the wake of the gold rush.’ the CAE popularised adult education through innovations Historical Records of Australian Science 6(3) 1986: 359–73. such as summer schools, an arts train, rural theatre and book CATHERINE DE COURCY discussion groups, plus an expanding scheme of fee-for- service hobby and skills-based programs. Increased awareness of adult education led to its Acland Street expansion. In 1962 the CAE supported the establishment of the Wangaratta Centre for Adult Education, the first of a This St Kilda street was named after Sir Thomas Dyke growing network of locally funded neighbourhood and Acland, a former owner of the schooner Lady of St Kilda, community houses. The first Melbourne-based community after which the suburb is named. Acland Street is divided provider was the Diamond Valley Learning Centre, estab- into two sections, the northern end primarily residential, the lished in 1973. In 1985 the Adult Education Association, a southern end below Carlisle Street entirely commercial. In student body affiliated with the CAE, began classes for the the 19th century and again today, the northern end has been volunteer-staffed University of the Third Age. From 1975 8 one of Melbourne’s most sought after addresses. From 1870 the Adult Migrant Education Services (AMES) offered adult it was the home of Moritz Michaelis, part-owner of the education in English as a Second Language (though forms of Footscray tanning works Michaelis Hallenstein, and whose this service had been offered since 1947). mansion Linden, operating today as a community art gallery, Following a 1974 Commonwealth initiative to establish still stands at number 26. Since the 1930s Acland Street has the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) sector and its been a meeting place for Jewish (see Jews and Judaism) and inclusive acknowledgment of the role of adult education in other Eastern European immigrants (see immigration), promoting lifelong learning, adult and community providers and became famous in the postwar period for its cake shops received funding to offer an increasing number of certified and cafés. In 1958, Masha and Avram Zeleznikow opened vocational programs. This broadened focus and heightened the Scheherazade Café, named after the Persian Queen and profile firmly located adult education as a preferred entry the Paris club where they met after the traumas of the war in point for adult career, life skills and leisure education and Europe. It soon became a haven for artists and writers, a role training. From the mid-1990s in excess of 100 000 adults it maintains today. An Acland Street Residents Association participate annually in a further education course, whether at was formed in 1994 to focus local concerns about traffic, a community organisation, CAE, AMES, TAFE institute or planning and development issues. private agency. SEAMUS O’HANLON Colin Robert Badger. Who was Badger?: Aspects of the life and work of Colin Robert Badger, director of adult education, Victoria, 1947–1971. Melbourne: Council of Adult Education, Adult education 1984. Helen Gribble. Useful knowledge: A brief history and description of adult, community and further education in Victoria. Provision of adult education began in Melbourne in 1839 Melbourne: Adult, Community and Further Education Board, with the establishment of the Melbourne Mechanics 1991. Institute. Based on English intellectual premises which

Acland Street PETER RUSHBROOK assumed an embedded class structure, Mechanics Institutes were organised by the middle classes for the benefit of the working classes. But with the rise of mass trade unionism Advertising, outdoor and working-class political organisation, which sharpened the class divide, the Institutes failed within 40 years. During the latter half of the 19th century, adult education From the 1840s, shopkeepers have distinguished their shifted to the newly founded technical colleges and schools premises with painted signs, elaborate window displays, or of art, which offered informal adult education programs goods exposed for sale on the footpath. Handbills were and hobby courses along with certified professional and distributed in the streets (‘bill sniping’), advertisements trade qualifications. But from 1892, a time of economic were stencilled or painted on footpaths (‘screeving’), while depression, these programs were a casualty of Victorian spruikers and sandwich-board men also proved popular government cuts to the funding of technical education. outdoor advertisements. Posters outside theatres advertised In 1891 the University of Melbourne established the the latest attractions, and other advertisers placed their University Extension Board (UEB) which offered to the posters on poles, buildings and construction site barriers

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: public fee-for-service ‘extension’ lectures based on subjects (known as hoardings).

In 1860 a Bill Sticking Co. erected fences at building sites for advertising purposes, and at least by 1875, three companies identified themselves as Bill Posters, owning and maintaining hoardings which were rented out to advertisers. The posters were created by commercial artists, notably Blamire Young and Harry Weston. Bill-posting companies paid large sums for exclusive advertising rights to railway station hoardings and space inside carriages. Advertising has since appeared on trams, buses and taxis, and their respective stops. Harold Clapp’s 1920s poster campaign promoting Victoria to urban commuters was later replicated at both national and international levels. Increasing car patronage stimulated roadside advertising. Large billboards have appeared near major arterials and intersections, while mobile billboards travel along city roads. From the 1910s, electricity enabled advertisements to be seen at night. Such advertisements as ‘Little Audrey’, the neon skipping girl on Victoria Street in Abbotsford, and the Nylex, Pelaco, Victoria Bitter and Slade Knitwear signs in Richmond have become celebrated landmarks. The Nylex sign is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Many landmark signs have been removed, including the S KIPPING GIRL VINEGAR SIGN ABOVE THE FACTORY IN V ICTORIA S TREET,

Southbank Allen’s sign and the Atlantic Ethyl and Shell A BBOTSFORD, 1968. Petroleum rolling dice at St Kilda junction. Ironically, name changes, such as Optus Oval for Princes Park, have con- verted other landmarks into outdoor advertisements. organised similar bodies. Melbourne hosted conventions in A fatality in 1896 due to a falling hoarding in Flinders 1921 and 1925, and by 1930 Melbourne agencies viewed Street polarised debate about the advertising hoardings as an Sydney as the nation’s premier advertising city. unsightly urban nuisance or an artistic and popular adver- Advertising expenditure plummeted during the depres- 9 tising medium. Little came from suggestions heard in the sion, causing an upsurge in false advertising. State Parliament Legislative Assembly in 1914 that hoardings be abolished, outlawed such advertising in 1932 in the first Act of its type though Melbourne City Council (MCC) regulations in 1920 in Australia. Radio advertising also emerged in the 1930s, its more strictly controlled outdoor advertising on footpaths popularity growing rapidly from World War II. Working and streets. Greater regulation within the industry occurred together as the War Effort Publicity Board, agencies in with the incorporation of the Outdoor Advertising Associa- Melbourne and Sydney successfully waged the Common- tion of Australia in 1939. During the 1960s and 1970s State wealth’s propaganda campaign using all sections of the media. Parliament took a more active interest in outdoor adver- Postwar prosperity and the emergence of television tising, increasing restrictions and by 1987 banning tobacco stimulated greater advertising activity and the industry advertising outdoors. The defacing of billboards with flourished accordingly. Clemenger and Monahan-Dayman- graffiti, most notably from the late 1970s by BUGA-UP Adams proved particularly successful Melbourne-based (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promo- agencies. With agencies following clients globally and tions), has become a common reaction to advertisements television stations networking nationally, Melbourne’s adver- deemed morally offensive. tising industry increasingly faced mergers and takeovers from ROBERT CRAWFORD interstate and abroad. While Clemenger joined forces with an American group to become the renowned Clemenger-BBDO agency, Monahan-Dayman-Adams’ merger with Sydney’s Advertising industry Mojo proved less successful. Like the Paton Advertising Service before it, Monahan-Dayman-Adams did not retain its identity and disappeared entirely. The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: Gordon & Gotch (1854) was the first agency in Melbourne ROBERT CRAWFORD of an industry which over time has not only created advertisements but has supported Melbourne’s media outlets and helped establish a consumer culture. Most advertising Africans appeared in the press, although outdoor advertising, pamphlets, and gimmicks or stunts also proved popular. Originally selling newspaper space, agents gradually Around 2000 Somali-born Africans came to Melbourne expanded and offered to create and insert advertisements. following the 1991 civil war in that country, and the city Hugh Paton’s Advertising Service (1904) was the first of such continues to be the centre of the Australian population of agencies in Melbourne. Somali and Nigerian immigrants. As diverse communities The industry’s disordered state was exploited, as agents divided along clan or ethnic lines, Melbourne’s Africans have overcharged clients and advertisers made false claims. To been represented and supported by a number of cultural, gain credibility, moves were made to regulate the industry. community and welfare organisations including the Somali

An Australian Advertisers’ Association was first mooted Relief Association, the Nigerian Society of Victoria, the Africans in 1911. Two years later the Victorian Advertising Club Ethiopian Community Association of Victoria, and the emerged as the nation’s first advertising organisation. African Communities Council of Victoria, a short-lived Following a 1918 advertising convention, other States umbrella organisation in the 1990s. Melbourne’s Somali

population was initially concentrated around Springvale quality newspaper that could take the place of the Argus, it (the location of the Enterprise migrant hostel) and south- needed to achieve a wider, middle-class appeal. Members of western suburbs, while Footscray has been the epicentre the Syme family had continued their association with the of the Ethiopian population. The influence of African paper after David Syme’s death in 1908. Ranald Macdonald, immigrants on Melbourne’s ethnic character has been his great-grandson, became managing director in 1964, revealed in recent decades through the burgeoning of African retaining this position until he decided to sell the paper to the restaurants, cafés, bands, and community radio programs. Fairfax group in 1983. Macdonald’s appointment of Graham At the Centre for Education and Research in Environ- Perkin as editor in 1966 allowed the development of the mental Strategies park in Brunswick, an African Village has determined investigative journalism that made the Age once from 1988 been the centrepiece of a multicultural education more a powerful social and political force, as well as earning it program. strong criticism from those whose activities it exposed. Following Perkin’s death in 1975, various editors have Greg Gow. The Oromo in exile: From the Horn of Africa to the endeavoured to maintain circulation by engaging new suburbs of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, columnists and diversifying the content of the Age into 2002. specialised sections and magazines. By 1995, the circulation ANDREW BROWN-MAY had risen to 191 150, an unsatisfactory figure that led to vigorous discounting for subscriptions, resulting in a Age newspaper temporary increase. Like all modern newspapers, the Age is threatened by the convenience as well as the immediacy of television news and features. Its movement into multimedia Founded on 17 October 1854 by the mercantile (see in the form of online news and advertisements is a further mercantile houses) firm of Francis Cook & Co., the Age diversification that proves its proprietors’ awareness of the was sold on 31 December of that year to a co-operative that need for continued change and expansion. included the journalist Ebenezer Syme, a former employee LURLINE STUART of the Argus. Ebenezer Syme became sole editor and proprietor in June 1856, to be joined by his brother David, a road contractor, the following September. David was disin- clined to take a prominent part in running the newspaper, Aged care 10 but Ebenezer’s retirement in 1857, followed by his death in 1860, forced him into a position that he might not otherwise Melbourne’s earliest institutions, the Benevolent Asylum have chosen. He remained in partnership with Ebenezer’s (1848) and the Immigrants’ Aid Society (1853), began as widow and, later, her son Joseph, and it was not until 1891 multipurpose facilities, but progressively focused on aged that he became sole proprietor. However, his determination care, with the opening of specialist hospitals, orphanages and to make the Age a powerful force in Victoria is evident from disability services, and the ageing of gold rush immigrants. the 1860s onwards. Anxious to save the more genteel from the indignities of Ebenezer’s politics had been radical; David was more such large institutions, community organisations like the Old conservative, though outspoken on issues he believed Colonists Association established cottages for their elderly important, including a fairer land policy, trade protection members. The Catholic Church moved into the field with the and a more democratic method of government. He was in a arrival of the Little Sisters of the Poor in 1883. position to influence both political decisions and the rise and The introduction of the aged pension in 1900 temporarily fall of leading politicians. This earned him the name of ‘the relieved the demand, but a concern for the plight of widows kingmaker’; it also gave rise to criticism from holders of left childless in the wake of World War I and couples left opposing beliefs, at times making him a controversial figure. destitute as a result of the Depression saw more church The Age expanded its activities through ventures such as homes opened. In 1945 the Brotherhood of St Laurence its town and country weekly, the Melbourne Leader (1856, began moving aged couples into its Carrum Downs later the Leader), which absorbed the Melbourne Weekly Age settlement, establishing the village pattern which would be (1855, later the Weekly Age) in 1868. The Leader, which was adopted more widely after Commonwealth Government able to continue until 1957, competed with the Australasian funding became available in 1955. (1864–1946), published by the Argus, and the Weekly Times The Brotherhood also established the Coolibah Club

newspaper (1869, still in print) published by the Herald. The Age was also (1946; see Coolibah Day Centre), the forerunner of Elderly in competition with the parent newspapers. Circulation Citizens Clubs which hosted the range of domiciliary services Age figures demonstrate the ascendancy of the Sun News-Pictorial developed in the postwar years. Beginning with Meals on (founded by the Herald in 1922, now in combination as the Wheels (South Melbourne, 1947), these services, designed to Herald Sun) as well as the improved position of the Age decrease the demand for institutional care, are administered following the closure of the Argus in 1957. by municipal councils through the Home and Community Services scheme (1970). Day hospitals auspiced by some of the 1941 1947 1954 1961 1962 established institutions provide medical and ancillary services for those with limited mobility and regular respite for their 25 959 372 232 426 788 586 732 576 048 Sun carers while Do-Care (1977), under the auspices of the Wesley 99 400 114 837 128 147 174 087 179 125 Age Central Mission, provides contact for the housebound. 108 370 123 943 160 731 — — Argus While, with the ageing of the population, there has been increasing pressure on private and charitable aged care The popularity of the Sun News-Pictorial depended a good facilities, most older Melburnians remain independently at deal on the fact that it was easy to read and printed in tabloid home. Less than 15% of the elderly use any aged care services, form. The Age had built up an advertising base that attracted with rates of institutionalisation the lowest in Australia. SHURLEE SWAIN The Encyclopedia of Melbourne: purchasers, though not necessarily readers. If it was to be a